Werewolf fairytales

A whole heart

*Margaret*

The story thus far has taken but a single day . . . but this final chapter happens later, after days blur together like shining beads on a string: luminous, joyful, slipping from pleasure to pleasure, into a memory of the best summer of our lives.

Even in all that joy, one night stands out. It is in the dog days of summer, when September still breathes sluggish summer dreams, and snow seems like an old wives’ tale. The lake water is warm even in the morning, and the lawn of Arbor House is burned by the sun and disheartened by the pounding of little slippers up and down its slope all day long.

Far from keeping the children out of the lake, Fenrir encourages amphibian habits. This particular day, court has been in session only in the morning, and he has the children in and out of the lake all afternoon.

By now they have all learned to swim, though none as well as Colin, who is a veritable fish. Shark has tied a wooden seat to a willow tree; it swings out over the lake and they take turns dropping, screaming, into the water. They race little wooden boats back and forth and quarrel over a dead fish that Alastair discovers floating belly up.

By six o’clock, when Fenrir and I come around to give goodnight kisses, all three children are already dreaming, brown as berries, exhausted and happy. Colin, Marguerite and Alastair have changed since June. When Fenrir first met them, they were scrappy but vulnerable, with the wariness of children who aren’t entirely sure that the world is a safe place.

Now they swim and run and play with a blithe sense of invulnerability. They are the pirate kings and queen of their world. They have Papa to protect them against everyone, including and most especially pirates, and Mama to cuddle them… when Papa isn’t… and Nanny to scold them, and Lyddie to ignore them, so they can get into mischief now and then.

To their minds, their parents have no greater ambitions than to wrestle and play and soothe them.

But, of course, their parents sometimes wait impatiently for bedtime, play chess with an eye on the clock, steal kisses that no one sees, and count the minutes until twilight falls.

This evening Fenrir keeps me and Alpha Moncrieff in stitches with tales of the i***t prosecutor for the Lycan Crown, one Barnardine Hubble.

“So Hubble looks down at Margery Bindle and he says, with all the pompous clearing of his throat and twitching of his wig that you can imagine, ‘Miss Bindle, can you confirm that you believe your baby was conceived on the evening of August eighteen, when the defendant came through Bath in company with his theater troupe?’”

“Poor she-wolf,” I say. “Caught by a player. Some of them are wickedly handsome.”

The sideways glance my husband gives me, which says without words that I am not to ogle good-looking actors, is quite satisfying.

“So,” Fenrir continues, “Margery agrees that the baby was conceived on the evening of August eighteen, and Hubble demands, ‘What were you doing at that time?’”

I break into giggles, and even the Alpha smiles. “The chamber went into an uproar,” Fenrir admits. “I couldn’t stop laughing myself, and afterward Hubble huffed around the back rooms complaining about a lack of dignity in the courtroom.”

“He’s right. There is no dignity in your court,” I say, putting down my fork. If I do not stop eating, I will be be as round as a church steeple in a few months. ‘”Tell your father what happened last week with the doctor.’”

Fenrir and his father are becoming fast friends, though naturally they never say such a thing aloud. They are too used to considering each other enemies, when to my mind they are more alike than different.

“Dr. Inkwell is fascinated by dissection,” Fenrir says, waving a paring knife as if to illustrate the doctor’s technique. “Alas, a Mrs. Crosby claimed that he dissected her husband while still alive, even though the man’s death was attested to by two doctors.”

“Poor she-wolf,” his father observes. He is peeling an apple in one neat spiral.

“Only Hubble would be fool enough to prosecute the case. He began by cross-examining the good doctor. ‘Before you began the dissection, did you check for a pulse?’ The doctor said no. ‘Did you check for breathing?’ The doctor said no.”

“Shouldn’t he have checked something of that nature?” the Alpha asks.

“Hubble asked if it’s possible that the patient was still alive,” Fenrir continues, “and Dr. Inkwell said no, because his brain was sitting in a jar on his desk.”

A slow smile curls the Alpha’s lips, the same smile that I see countless times a day on my own husband’s face.

“And then Hubble asked, without skipping a beat, ‘But could the patient have still been alive?’”

“This is the part I love,” I put in. “ ‘Absolutely,’ snaps Dr. Inkwell. ‘Mr. Crosby is undoubtedly alive and practicing the law.’”

We frighten a sleeping sparrow with our laughter. She starts from her nest and flies in a circle around the courtyard before settling in the old oak.

We have been dining early so the Alpha can take himself back to his own house and spend the next day working on the most important bill that the House of Alphas will see this quarter.

“Tomorrow,” I call, blowing my father-in-law a kiss as he takes his leave.

*Fenrir*

There are no lonely corners of my heart anymore, but had there been, my father’s grin as he leaves soothes them.

I have a family now. Hand in hand, Margaret and I wander down the lawn to the water, and from there climb into the flat-bottom rowboat, and from there end up in mid-lake. We begin with a twilight swim and end up naked in the boat.

It is that sort of evening.

She is lying flat on her back, enjoying the slosh of warmish water that is playing around her back. I am on my knees, perched over her, and she knows that any moment now the queen of the pirates will make me happy.

But probably not until I beg.

Which I am going to do, as soon as I’ve had enough of stroking those luscious breasts, and then down the slope of her stomach, and…

The slope of her stomach.

“Margaret?” I ask. “Is there something you forgot to tell me?”

She looks down at me, tosses her hair over her shoulder in a way that makes her breasts plump in my hands. “beta Fenrir, have you noticed that I like to choose the right moment to make important announcements?”

“I have.”

“I have no time for that now.”

My hands slide down, into the hottest, wettest place on the whole boat. She gasps and dips to kiss me.

I kiss her hard, saying without words what is in my heart.

Then she straightens and lets me guide her with strong hands, lets me drop her at just the right angle, lets her cry echo across the rippling water and into the quiet night.

“You are my heart,” I say, thrusting into her, fierce, out of control as always, beside myself.

She smiles down at me, hair wet and finger-combed, looking like Venus perched on a clamshell rather than atop a battered pirate. She looks like a boy’s wet dream. She looks like my wife.

“I love you,” she gasps as I thrust up, at just the angle that she knows she likes best.

“And, Fenrir?”

“Yes?” I am not really listening, concentrating on making her come before I completely lose my claim to manhood.

“We’re having a baby,” she coos.

“You choose now to make your announcement? Now?”

Her hands are clutching my shoulders, and I see her eyes go luminous, pleasure-filled. She loses control then, but it’s all right, because we reach that moment together and tumble down into a river-soft silence together.

And then when I carry her off the boat… with a leg that is stronger than ever… I lay her gently on the grass and whisper, “So we’re having a baby?”

Her eyes are tender and unbearably loving. “Yes.”

“Our fourth,” I say, stretching out beside her. “Do you think we have a boy or a girl in here?” I cup her stomach.

“I don’t know. A little future Alpha, perhaps?”

“I would like Colin to be the Alpha,” I say, feeling a prickle of guilt. Colin is my right-hand man.

“Colin would hate to be an Alpha,” she says with a laugh. “He is going to sea, Fenrir. You know he is. You simply need to concentrate on making sure that he never becomes a pirate.”

“Of course not,” I murmur.

And distracts her again.